One Pound Fish man arrives in Pakistan to hero's welcome

Unless you’ve been living at the bottom of the ocean for the last month or instinctively shut down at the first sign of seafood themed shenanigans you cannot help but know about the hit viral singing sensation, One Pound Fish.

Pakistani born market trader Muhammad Shaid Nazir who ran a fish stall at the Queen’s Street market in West Ham came up with the ditty to help serenade passing customers into a sliver of sole or a side of salmon. Filmed one day strutting his stuff in the market, he became a huge youtube sensation, clocking up millions of views.

Clearly an enterprising fellow who knows to strike when the iron is hot, he instantly made a doomed bid for the Christmas number one spot via a genuine recorded release. This assault on the charts included a bizarre music video that is sort of fish market meets budget Bollywood with a bit of David Guetta thrown in on the generic dance backing track. It is, in short, wonderfully surreal.

But his eager embrace of his 15 minutes came back to haunt him as his new high profile status raised an eyebrow or 2 at the Home Office. A few digs through the paperwork later and it transpired that Mr Nazir – the new don of showbiz had broken the terms of his student visa and was consequently illegally in the UK.

One astonishingly swift deportation later, and Mr Nazir arrived back in his native Pakistan last night to be mobbed by a crowd of fans and well wishers. The father-of-four and his wife Kashifa were greeted with chants of ‘long live the one pound fish’ after disembarking their flight from the UK.

Among the well-wishers greeting him at the airport was his mother and before he knew it, he was picked up on the shoulders of fans and given a floral wreath to hang around his neck. Addressing the throng, he vowed to return to Europe to promote his masterpiece in France.